This blog has looked at Maggie Gallagher (pictured at right) and what I view as her bitter and warped mindset that seemingly tracks back to her unwed mother pregnancy in college - something that she has never overcome psychologically. Adding to Gallagher's hypocrisy is her marriage to a Hindu, someone whom her Christofascist brethren say is doomed to go straight to Hell. In a recent interview recounted in Huffington Post, Gallagher conceded that her anti-gay marriage jihad had likely failed and that same sex marriage would soon be a nation wide phenomenon in America. Beyond that, however, Gallagher remains the same bigoted, mean spirited bitch woman and takes umbrage that her anti-gay bigotry and support for special rights fro evangelical Christians is at its core little different from the Jim Crow laws that once predominated across the South and elsewhere. Here are some interview highlights:
She doesn't dispute that the tide has turned in the fight for gay rights since she entered it. But she isn’t completely dejected about the recent string of losses. "I have a lot more freedom now to figure out what I want to do with the next 20 years of my life," she wrote in an email on Thursday.
She weighed in on what's next for the social conservative movement and the growing number of religious Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, among a range of other issues, not excluding the recent St. Patrick's Day controversy.
At this point, what do you think is the most effective way to push the message of "traditional marriage" forward?
As I said last summer, it was clear to me from reading Windsor [the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor], gay marriage advocates now have five votes for inserting a right to gay marriage in our Constitution. We are now in the 'gay marriage in all 50 states' phase whether we like it or not. What's next? In my view people who believe in the traditional understanding of marriage, and believe that it matters, have to become a creative minority, finding way to both express these sexual views, culturally, artistically and intellectually and to engage with the newly dominant cultural view of marriage respectfully but not submissively.
Lots of thoughts packed into the latter sentence. As for social conservatives as a political movement, even to retain religious liberty protections is going to require a new and more serious engagement with politics.
Do you support the religious exemption legislation that several southern states have been pressing?
I haven't read the legislation in question -- it was vetoed in Arizona practically before I became aware it existed, but assuming the religious liberty scholars (including Prof. Doug Laycock) who wrote about it were correct, yes I would support it. I do not think religion should be used to discriminate against gay people in everyday life and I also do not think whole professions should be closed to people who cannot affirm gay unions as marriages, because then, once in a while, a gay person will have to find another photographer.
The comparison of these efforts to "Jim Crow" is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Jim Crow was a system where powerful elites tried to crush the ability of black people to live their lives as part of ordinary society.
[R]right now what I see, as I suspect you do: powerful corporations, elite institutions are all lining up to protect and proclaim the dignity of gay people. Small numbers of unusually devoted Christians are just trying to feed their kids. I do not see who is benefited really by putting them out of business.
Have you seen this recent survey showing a really dramatic shift in public opinion among religious groups, and what do you make of it?
Religious people do not exist in a vacuum and as opposition to gay marriage becomes defined in the public sphere as a bigoted and discriminatory impulse, many religious people want to get good with the newly dominant public morality. The new rule is: the only way to express concern and care for gay people is to be for gay marriage, so of course many religious people wanting to express concern and care for gay people generally and for the gay people in their lives will go that route.
Has this been a difficult time for you? Does it come up often in conversation with others who oppose legalizing same-sex marriage, and if so, how is it talked about?
No, it's really not been a difficult time for me personally. I went into this fight, in good conscience, because I believed it mattered and that I had something to contribute. I did not promise myself I would win. I promised myself I would do everything I could see, to do this good, to fight for marriage as a universal human institution with certain goods and goals. I feel a great deal of contentment about that.
The take away? Gallagher remains a self-centered bitch woman who, due to her own psychological issues/frailties, still would if allowed like to force her religious beliefs on all citizens. The only positive is that she is not so delusional as to be incapable of realizing that her size has lost the battle. As for her lack of regret, she made a huge amount of money peddling hate and bigotry and now can live comfortably. She may be comfortable as to what she did, but I suspect the money means more to her than any true concern for the so-called "sanctity of marriage." Bottom line, Gallagher is NOT what I consider a nice and decent person.
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